Does not deserve to call himself an American

I had been wondering why thousands of people, many of them clearly capable of the short trek from the Superdome to the bridges across the Mississippi were stuck in New Orleans. Well, the answer is this man had his officers shoot at them when they tried.

(I ran a thing for a few weeks called “The Face of Evil.” The only thing that prevented me posting this as “the face of evil” is today’s date. )

This is what his officers did. Basically, when a group of hurricane survivors tried to do the obvious and simple thing, the productive and American thing – walk out of New Orleans instead of waiting around for a handout – his officers fired warning shots over their heads and turned them back. Later, after the people he turned back setup a camp on a freeway overpass, his officers and helicopter chased them away and stole their food and water.

Lawson even had the nerve to confirm that it was done under his orders:

In an interview with UPI, Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson confirmed that his department shut down the bridge to pedestrians: “If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged.”

Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson confirmed that his officers were under his orders to seal off the suburban city of 17,500 residents.

“We had individuals bused into Gretna and dropped off, and we had no idea they were coming. No one ever called us — we have no shelter in Gretna, and our citizens were under a mandatory evacuation. This place was already locked down.”